Sir Francis Drake, March 24

He was considered a “rock star” of his era, and his three-year journey around the world in the 1500s was equivalent to the United States landing of a man on the moon in the 1960s. Sir Francis Drake, the British explorer who sailed the West Coast, spent five-weeks on land in 1579 repairing his ship and getting to know the native tribes that lived on the coast. All of that is accepted. What is not accepted is the location as to where he came ashore and spent more than a month with his 80 top 90 men. California historians say the site was Drake Bay, north of San Francisco. But others disagree. Some point to Nehalem Bay north of Tillamook, and an archaeologist in Oregon has been exploring a potential site at Whale Cove, just south of Depoe Bay on the Central Coast. Melissa Darby is leading the expedition and she doesn’t think it’s a done deal. What’s at stake is a designation by the U.S. Department of Interior of first encounters between Europeans and Native Americans. At Whale Cove, researchers have been slowly sifting through soil looking for buttons or coins, even evidence of forging, garbage pits, or latrines.